


Three Fates, Watching

by kangeiko



Category: Blake's 7, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Community: multiverse5000, Crossover, Gen, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-24
Updated: 2009-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jim Kirk is six years old, his parents make a deal on his behalf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Fates, Watching

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to queenspanky and mizzykitty for their invaluable assistance; if it makes any sense, it is entirely up to their efforts.

*

_Implacable_

*

It doesn't work on him. There's something in his brain chemistry, or his neural connections, _something_, somewhere, that keeps this grasping, bruising thing from taking hold. The too-large hands merely brush against him, strange and uncomfortable before they fade back into memory. It's a shameful thing for the Centre and they try again, the restraints biting into his wrists as they strap him back down. It doesn't work then, either. No, not on him. No one quite knows why.

The failure isn't known for a while. Someone slipped up: they didn't check the new neural connections; they didn't ask the control questions; they failed to give him a lollipop. He is six years old, and there is a fat, squirming batch of new memories deposited into his cortex, crawling blinding through his thoughts to find room to grow and fester in the night. His father is grim-faced beside him, staring down at the authorisation form bearing his thumbprint and Sam is craning his head to see. A beautiful lady with calculating eyes is murmuring something soothing to his father, and George Kirk looks more relieved with each word. He doesn't look down to where Jimmy is sitting on the metal table, fidgeting and glaring at all the neurotechnicians. _Jimmy,_ his mother says, hands on his shoulders, _Jimmy, my darling, it's going to be all right._

He has never hated his parents more.

*

The problem is, his older brother is a complete loser. Sammy is too fucking _soft_, all big eyes and quiet voice and eager to please. _Pathetic_. He is an alpha only by dint of genetics, and this tells Jimmy a lot more about the grading system than his teachers ever could. If his brother is an alpha, then there's no glory in that, and no use relying on it to get him anywhere.

When Sam was eight years old, and Jimmy maybe four, he got caught holding hands with a delta girl. Jimmy didn't see much wrong with that at the time, since the delta couldn't do anything to Sam. It wasn't like Sam was going to breed with her or anything. Their parents saw plenty wrong with it, though. The girl was sent away, and Sam was punished. Punished, hah! It was nothing too severe, a beating Jimmy had himself received stoically many times over. Sam, though, fuck, Sam _cried_. He sat there all big-eyed and helpless and fucking _cried_ for his friend. Jimmy remembers Sam holding on to his hand too tightly, thin fingers squashing his still babyishly pudgy hands until he yanked his hand free. He remembers looking up at his brother and thinking, _how weak, how stupid, to cry over a girl._

It is September 12th, sometime in the early evening. His parents have conferred, and decided that Sam is too delicate to survive the procedure. Jimmy is young and strong, they agree. He'll bounce back.

His hands hurt and he's hungry and as the technician leads him away, he catches sight of Sam's tear-streaked face. This is the moment that he stops respecting his brother.

*

_Grudging_

*

His parents don't know what has gone wrong, but clearly something has. As a six year old, he is quite unremarkable. He wanted what all the other male alpha six year olds wanted, and his parents dutifully catered to his every whim, every toy gun and truck and book lovingly wrapped and presented, broken and discarded, in rapid succession. He built elaborate traps for his brother, tall winding towers of building blocks designed to come down on Sam's unsuspecting head. He fought with the other boys. He excelled in school, as expected and required. By all accounts, quite unremarkable for an alpha six year old.

Except for one area, of course: something a little wrong with him, something a little off. There is something a little too cold in him for the engrams to stick to and reshape. It's not an issue with his growth, the psychotherapist assures his mother. She stands in the therapist's office with one hand on Jimmy's shoulder and another on Sam's, her over-long nails digging into Jimmy's plump little shoulder.

_He's perfectly normal, Mrs Kirk,_ the therapist says soothingly. He's talking about Sam, and Jimmy is uninterested. _Maybe a little too inclined towards the softer sciences…_ Of course he is, the weakling, Jimmy thinks, and is unsurprised to see his mother nod tightly. If his father were here, he thinks, Sam would be booked in for some treatment immediately. George Kirk wouldn't tolerate any weakness in his first-born. It is unfortunate that it is Winona who is here and not George, because Winona loves Sammy best and makes allowances where she should not.

It is Winona, Jimmy realises a little later, who must have decided that he should be the one to go in for the procedure. His parents told him together, but it had to have been his mother. He's a little younger than the other children shivering on the testimonial vids, and certainly Sam would have made a much better victim up there, all wide-eyed and innocent. But it was Jimmy who was chosen instead and strapped down in a cold little room and told all sorts of inadequate lies.

_Why didn't the engrams take?_ Winona asks the therapist, careless of her sons' presence. Sammy loves her too fiercely and loyally to ever stray, and Jimmy is too young still to understand.

The therapist's cold little eyes, dark and rounded like glass beads, watch Jimmy for a long while. He stares back, unafraid.

_Perhaps he did not wish them to,_ he says eventually, something strange in his voice.

Years later, Jimmy will understand that this was approval.

*

_Avenging Blood_

*

Sam dies on Tarsus IV, part of four thousand executed, mostly Federation officials and their families. The delta peasants, scraping out a living on the fields, are spared. Deltas! On the last day of the executions, Kodos takes to the stage and harps on about military dictatorships and brainwashing and the need to break free from the tyrannical Federation. He stands in the middle of the half-constructed amphitheatre, a relic from the more prosperous years the colony had enjoyed a mere decade ago. Jimmy - fourteen years old and already one of the best marksmen his Academy class has ever seen - takes careful aim.

Three days later, once the uprising has been stamped down, a spokesman flying a new banner for the Empress will drop the moniker of 'Federation' and announce the dawn of a new Empire. Jimmy - fourteen and already orphaned - will not be able to tell the difference.

He does remember seeing the bodies of the rebels, though, displayed in the Academy museum. They flew Kodos down and stuffed him upright, sandwiched in between a gaunt, dark-haired man and a large, curly-haired one with a scar across his cheek. When Jimmy visits the museum a year later, the recollection is immediate.

*

He doesn't remember it, not really. He has seen pictures of the man, and he remembers bits and pieces here and there. He remembers the act itself - the _secret secret_ bits of it, just so, so important that the voice says it twice, sing-song - but not the prelude. Not the details. What did Blake's hair smell like when he bent down? Where was his gun during this? Was it at school? When? Where were his teachers during this? Where was his brother? Who allowed a convicted criminal to have access to his six-year-old self?

The records don't match his memories, and his parents look elsewhere when he asks. He understands that he is not supposed to ask, that this is a bad sign. He's supposed to _tell_ instead, to rage and scream and cry all over the sympathetic nurse who has come to take his testimony and pat him on the head. _Oh, you poor child, you must be so confused…_

When he asks her how a man like Blake was able to get access to him in a supposedly secure educational facility, she stops taking notes. She frowns instead, and looks down at him as if he has said something outrageous and uncalled for.

"But how did he get in?" He persists, his voice still high and lisping. "Isn't the school secure? And why did no one notice I was missing? Why are there no absences on the records?"

She frowns some more at him, and makes a note in her chart.

Just like that, the interview is concluded. A specialist will come to see his parents later, to inform them that their youngest has shown potential and to suggest that they enrol him at the Academy.

(His is not one of the stories brought up in the subsequent trial.)

*

James T. Kirk takes command of the ISS Enterprise when he is twenty-nine, the youngest captain ever in the Fleet's history. Pike's body is cooling in the morgue, Marlena is safely ensconced in his bed, and Spock has chosen to swear allegiance rather than fight him or transfer.

In the privacy of his own quarters, he raises a glass to the late, great Roj Blake.

*

fin


End file.
